Category Archives: Houston ship channel

DCT Industrial had a busy 2017, despite the oil downturn.The real estate investment trust broke ground on three new Houston-area facilities totalling 474,000 square feet, and it acquired 48 acres in the Port of Houston.

The Denver-based company is one of the largest industrial owners and developers in the Bayou City, managing 5 million square feet of industrial real estate locally.Justin Bennett, the senior vice president overseeing DCT’s Houston operations, recently visited with the Chronicle about his outlook for 2018.

Q: How’s business? A: Business is doing very well. A big boon to the industry has been the expansion of plastics.

To capitalize on a flood of domestic and Canadian crude into the U.S. Gulf Coast, logistics giant Kinder Morgan Energy Partners is spending more than $1.5 billion in Houston to build the most flexible oil and fuel transport hub in the country.The company’s expanding infrastructure smorgasbord includes a bit of almost everything at the increasingly crowded Houston Ship Channel – all next door to the biggest concentration of refiners in the country.The buildout, executives say, responds to the increasingly dynamic world of physical crude trading in North America, where the variety of available crudes is growing, and is aimed at securing their central position in moving oil from the U.S. shale boom to market.Customers want multiple options to switch delivery modes on a dime and snag the best price for refinery feedstocks. They need more dock and storage space to handle surging volumes of fuel being shipped overseas.”More of them are producing more than they can consume in the United States. So they want to take it to water, either for movement up and down the coast … or to export because you see a tremendous amount of growth,” John Schlosser, president of Kinder Morgan’s terminal division, said of refiners.Schlosser, who spoke to Reuters on a tour of the company’s facilities, said the company was doubling down on its core business.”Our bread and butter is the midstream – that’s where we’re making all of our investments,” he said. “It’s like connecting the dots.”Kinder’s latest push is to add storage and pipeline connections to final domestic destinations, a huge oil-by-rail offloading operation, and a wider export platform.

Houston is among the top cities in the country with the most industrial construction underway, thanks mostly to the booming energy industry. And there’s more to come.There are currently 45 spec and build-to-suit industrial buildings totaling 5.2 million square feet under construction in Houston. Only Atlanta; Chicago; Baltimore; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas; Indianapolis; Southern California; and Philadelphia are building more this year, according to Graham Hildebrand, JLL research manager.

A partnership between units of Sasol Ltd. and Ineos Europe AG has reached a final investment decision FID to build a high-density polyethlyne HPDE plant in the La Porte, TX petrochemical complex southeast of Houston.Sasol Chemicals USA LLC and Ineos Olefins & Polymers USA agreed to form a joint venture and proceed with the project, first announced last year see Daily GPI, July 25, 2013. The 50-50 partnership plans to produce 470 kilotons/year of bimodal HDPE. Ethylene required to produce HDPE would be supplied by each partner for the La Porte plant, which is to be built at the Battleground Manufacturing Complex operated by Ineos.La Porte is home to the Barbours Cut Terminal and Bayport, both operated by the Port of Houston, which serve international trading operations.”This project will expand Sasol’s presence in the global chemical market and complement our North American growth strategy,” said Sasol’s Fleetwood Grobler, group executive for global chemicals. “Its location offers several benefits, including access to U.S. Gulf Coast infrastructure and proximity to our current and proposed ethane cracker and derivatives complex in Southwest Louisiana.”

The Houston Ship Channel reopened in nearly all directions of vessel traffic for the first time since a March 22 oil spill.

The United States Coast Guard authorized inbound and outbound vessel and tanker movements, with the exception of outbound barge movements from the upper ship channel, Petty Officer Eric Coleman said by telephone. The Coast Guard planned to shut down the channel at about sunset and resume movements when daylight returned, Coleman said.

As of 25 March, 50 vessels were waiting to come into the Houston Ship Channel, and 30 were waiting to leave, Petty Officer Matthew Schofield said by telephone. Three tankers were waiting to enter Galveston Texas City, and three were waiting to leave; 19 barges were in the queue at Pelican Cut, three barges at Barbours Cut, seven barges at Bayport and 35 barges at Bolivar.